Flushing building #2 on bad elevator list

BY VICTOR G. MIMONI

Wednesday, March 26, 2008 3:45 PM EDT

Queens has a lot of things to be proud of. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of them.

At a recent press conference, New York City Department of Buildings (DOB) Commissioner Patricia J. Lancaster announced the list of the 10 worst apartment buildings in the entire city for elevator violations, and a Flushing building was high on the list.

In fact, out of the 975,000 buildings in New York City, the apartment building at 34-15 Parsons Boulevard in north Flushing came in second on DOB’s “Top Worst Offenders List,” with 86 elevator-related complaints - 103 DOB complaints in total.

The building is owned by a Vantage Properties LLC, a Manhattan Real Estate company, through one of 32 limited-liability management companies.

Taken together, the value of their Queens holdings is hundreds of millions of dollars, according to available information of the city’s Department of Finance website.

Repeated calls to the company, located at 750 Lexington Avenue, were not returned. Its CEO, Neil L. Rubler, is also president of each of the subsidiaries.

The DOB has issued 57 violations for the three elevators at the 175-apartment location, for problems including improper controls and cars that fail to properly level at stops.

“We live in a vertical city where residents rely on elevator service to easily enter and exit their homes,” Lancaster said, declaring, “Lack of access to working elevators presents a major safety risk that those living in elevator buildings should not have to face.”

According to Lancaster, the list is “part of a shame campaign to force building owners to return their elevators to service.”

The ten worst offenders will be pursued under the DOB’s Elevator Enforcement Program and their attorneys are pursuing cases against them at the Environmental Control Board and in Criminal Court.

“In several instances, guilty pleas have been taken and fines assessed. In others, court dates have been scheduled for the coming weeks and months,” Lancaster said.

The Elevator Safety Program builds upon the successful enforcement actions taken against buildings under a pilot program launched by the DOB in 2006.

As part of that program, 104 buildings were identified as major offenders and pursued. Approximately 70% of the owners have brought their elevators into compliance or are in the process of making the ordered repairs.

In total, the DOB has pursued criminal actions against 65 owners, and, with the assistance of Department of Housing Preservation and Development, brought three recalcitrant owners into Housing Court.

One of these cases resulted in the highest penalty for an elevator violation in the city’s history - $50,000.